New Year, New Beginnings
by MidnightRose24
Summary: New year, new you? More like new year, same you, new beginnings. Note: Written for sunburst city for the rachel nico holiday challenge on LJ.


'_Jingle bells, jingle bells-'_

Rachel's hand, covered in flecks of different coloured pain, slammed down on the power button of the small black radio that stood on the mahogany chair beside her. The music cut off abruptly, leaving the last word of the song hanging in the air. Christmas had been over for six days now. It had been fun, but she had been bombarded with enough Christmas carols all the way up to Christmas day. It was the end of the holiday season; the music stopped now before her brain turned to mush that could only process the winter celebrations.

"Do you mind not breaking my stuff?" Percy asked with mock-annoyance as he flipped through the channels, hopelessly looking for something good to watch.

Rachel continued to brush long strokes across the painting she had been working on the past day and a half. This newest masterpiece of hers was a simple landscape of an old home, possibly built in the mid 40s, with a young woman walking up the old, creaky steps towards the more modern front door. The house was an odd sort of mix of old and new.

There was a story behind this woman coming to this particular home, and Rachel was determined to find out just exactly what it was. Maybe this petite, brunette was going to visit a family member who had long since forgotten her name, and was losing memory of more and more things with each passing day. Or maybe she was there because it was simply her home. It was still unclear, but, in time, Rachel would hear the woman whisper it to her between each stroke of the thin-bristled paint brush.

When she finished painting on an overgrown bush next to the steps, she said to Percy, "I won't break your stuff. Not when you mom was nice enough to let me paint in her apartment."

An exasperated sigh reached Rachel's eardrum from where Percy lay sprawled across the couch. "It's New Years Eve, isn't today supposed to be exciting?" he complained.

"More so at night than day," she answered, and used her forearm to push a stray strand of hair out of the way. "When are Annabeth and Nico getting here?"

"Annabeth said she'll meet us at the new pizza place near Times Square, and Nico doesn't know if he can come now, but Annabeth told him where we'd be in case he can make it," he answered. 'One Day!' echoed through the speakers of the TV when Percy flipped to another channel for the nth time. "Macy's has a one day sale every day," he muttered.

"Why won't Nico be here?" She shouldn't be surprised, seeing as Nico could be so iffy and unclear on a lot of things and plans were not exception.

Percy shrugged before realizing that she probably wasn't watching him to see it. "He didn't say exactly. How much you want to bet he pissed off his dad or Persephone _again_?"

She answered him half-jokingly, "Sounds like me and my parents."

Apparently the woman in the painting was shy today, because Rachel was lost as to what to add to the painting next. She set her brush down and blew out a puff of air from between half parted lips. _Now seems like a good time for a break_, she decided.

She left Percy to continue his seemingly impossible search for entertainment, and grabbed her tote bag to go change in the bathroom. She knew Sally should've gotten Netflix for Christmas.

A few moments later the bathroom door rattled as Percy knocked on it, causing Rachel to jump at the unexpected noise. "What?" she called to him through the door.

"Annabeth is already down at the pizza place. I told her we'd go early to meet her," he called back.

She finished pulling her clean shirt over her head and swung the door open to follow Percy down out of the apartment, towards the giant crowd of possible giant idiots. A lot of pushing and shoving and generally squeezing between people, Percy and Rachel finally caught sight of Annabeth sitting at a table in the far corner of the small restaurant. As they made their way over to her so did a tall, lean boy decked in all black.

"Look who made it after all," Percy greeted Nico with a slap on the shoulder, causing some of the steaming brown liquid to slop over onto Nico's hand.

Nico shook the drops of his drink off his hand and handed Rachel a cup of a darker looking drink. "My dad said I got too annoying and let me go," he explained to Percy.

Rachel took a sip of her drink to find that was hot chocolate with a bit of peppermint in it. "So you got in trouble for being annoying and then you got out of trouble for being even more annoying?" she asked amusedly.

"No," he corrected her, "I got in trouble for calling Persephone a—"

Annabeth swallowed a gulp of hot chocolate and cut in, "I think they get the idea."

Rachel glanced outside the window and sighed at the sight of all the people. If it weren't for nothing else to do tonight and the fact that hanging out with her friends was far better than hanging out in her house with her parents, she wouldn't be here. Times Square on New Year's Eve was like the Labyrinth—dangerous and unpredictable, with a smidge of aggravation here and there. "We should probably make our way out to find a spot in the crowd, anyway." Trying her best to think happy thoughts, she made her way back out through the door with the others following not too far behind.

Hours later, after dealing with idiots, going through cups and cups of hot chocolate—except for Nico, who drank coffee, but was then forced to stop drinking it after his second cup when Percy noticed Nico was getting too antsy for his liking—and listening to artists perform their already overplayed hits, the countdown began.

_Ten,_

"Even though this crowd is kind of hellish, but I'm glad we're all here to ring in the New Year and all that."

_Nine,_

"How very…cheesy of you, Rachel."

_Eight,_

"Not as cheesy as you are with calling Annabeth 'Wise Girl."

_Seven,_

"It's an inside joke!"

_Six,_

"Both of you stop it."

_Five,_

"She started it…"

_Four,_

"You continued it."

_Three,_

"Hush, Di Angelo."

_Two,_

"All of you shut up!"

_One!_

The crowd erupted into noise—screams, cheers, blow horns, and an explosion of confetti to go with it all. Before Rachel could join in with them Nico's lips (which were tinted with some of the coffee he drank earlier) were suddenly on hers. It was over in seconds, but the feeling lasted for hours.

"Happy New Year, Dare," he murmured in her ear.

"Happy New Year," she replied in a sort of daze of confusion and...happiness?

He rested his hand on her lower back and glanced over at Percy and Annabeth. As Rachel turned to look with him to see Percy and Annabeth smiling at each other in between kisses, suddenly, she knew how what the woman's story was: she was going to visit the boy with the old soul.


End file.
